CAREER OUTLOOK
Most Promising in STEM
Kentucky, have completed Ph.D.s in evolutionary biology. We believe that the BEA- CON evolution-in-action projects have a tremendous potential to help more African American students grasp the significance and the power of evolutionary ideas to solve significant, real-world problems, both biological and engineering. Digital evolution will provide a revolutionary new educational tool that can help students understand and appreciate not only the power of evolutionary mechanisms, but also the nature of scientific reasoning itself. For example, it has already been dem- onstrated that Avida-Ed software (
http://avida-ed.msu.edu/) has improved Michigan State University students’ grasps of evolutionary mechanisms through incorporation of this tool in biology courses. Thus we see North Carolina A&T State University as an important reservoir of untapped potential for diversity in fields utilizing evolutionary reasoning.
USBE&IT: Will A&T host awareness-raising events such as summer camps and teacher education for the K-12 community? JG: BEACON was designed with outreach as a fundamental component. Myself and Goldie Byrd are the education and diversity coordinators for BEACON@A&T. We are both biologists of international reputation with outstanding records in undergraduate mentoring of underrepresented minority students. For example, I author a monthly blog entitled Making Sense of Biology (
http://evostudies.org/blog/?author=8). Dr. Randall Hayes is developing a for-credit online course on the teaching of evo- lution and a weekly podcast. The course is targeted to a mixed audience of undergradu- ate biology majors, pre-K-12 teachers, in-service K-12 teachers, graduate students and/ or postdoctoral researchers, particularly those interested in pursuing careers at teaching- intensive undergraduate institutions.
The podcast will be a 15-minute weekly podcast on evolution, broadly defined as systems that display variation, heredity, and selection. This podcast will be unique in being both primarily informational and interdisciplinary, comparing and contrasting how evolution works across systems and in layman’s terms.
The content will consist of interviews with scientists and teachers, evolution book reviews, interesting anecdotes from the history of evolution, and answering listener e- mails. Interviews will focus on evolution, but also cover more personal “how I became a scientist” stories in order to increase the human dimension of science. In addition to initiatives at A&T, due to BEACON’s consortium character, students will have access to resources at all of the partner institutions—Michigan State Univer- sity, University of Washington, the University of Texas-Austin, and University of Idaho. These include a residential BEACON summer program for high school students at Michigan State University, and courses at the Kellogg Biological Station in Michigan, and the Friday Harbor Marine Laboratories in Washington.
University in 1988. He was elected a fellow of the Council of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1994. He has served as a member of the external advisory board for the National Human Genome Center at Howard University. Dr. Graves is currently serving on the senior advisory board for the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center at Duke University.
Dr. Graves has been an active par- ticipant in the struggle to protect and improve the teaching of science, par- ticularly evolutionary biology in public schools. In 2007, he was featured in the CNN Anderson Cooper 360 pro- gram on Dr. James Watson. The same year, he became a member of the editorial board of Evolution: Education and Outreach, published by Springer- Verlag. Dr. Graves has been a leader in addressing the underrepresentation of minorities in science careers, and has directed successful programs in Cali- fornia and Arizona. Currently, he serves as a member of the board of the Guilford Education Alliance, which con- nects home, school and community as the foundation for a quality education system for all American citizens.
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TURNING SUCCESS INTO LEGACY One man’s pursuit to lift up generations behind him:
What distinguishes Randall Boseman as an outstanding guy is not his senior-level position at one of the biggest companies in the world, but rather his contributions to the community and his desire to lead the generations behind him.
Michigan State University announced in June that the MSU Beacon Center is now open. In partnership with col- leagues at University of Texas-Austin, University of Washington, North Carolina A&T State University, and the University of Idaho, the center will promote the transfer of discoveries from biology into computer science and engineering design, and use novel computational methods to ad-
100 USBE&IT I WINTER 2011
www.blackengineer.com
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